The roadmap [David Warren]

davidwarrenonline.com ^ | 2007.04.04 | David Warren

[B-Chan]

It seems I accidentally wrote an interesting column on Sunday; at least, judging from mail. (It’s like the monkeys with the typewriters: you never know which monkey is going to write Hamlet.) My piece was a recollection of the moment in my late-1960s adolescence when -- as it struck me then, and still strikes me -- all the principles and assumptions and certainties upon which I’d been raised, turned upside down around me.

My correspondents have fallen into two broad generational classes.

In the first class are my contemporaries, or older people, many of them indulging nostalgia. They recalled the same “inversion experience,” from around the same time (the late 1960s). I compared it to being aboard a ship that didn’t sink, but capsized. They compared it to many other things. But in common, from all accounts, was this sense that our world had indeed rotated, that the submerged “hippie culture” below us had somehow come out on top. And those in schools, at least those who were reasonably intelligent, further noticed that academic standards, as well as mere dress codes, suddenly collapsed, almost everywhere. Social discipline evaporated. Foul became fair, and fair became foul.

The second class are much younger, often around the age of my children. They are, mostly, discontented students of today, trying to explain to themselves why their parents’ generation was such a dead loss -- spineless, empty, hopeless, directionless. They are vaguely aware that something awful happened around the 1960s, but do not know what.

Their instincts, and often their book-reading tells them there once was a robust and self-confident “Western Civilization”; that it ruled the world; and that at its heart, for all its flaws (which their teachers keep stressing) it exalted the good, the true, and the beautiful. That it produced the greatest literature, art, and music; the greatest science, philosophy, and theology the world had known. That this civilization was unambiguously Christian. But now they sense only jackals, circling while it dies; and the fatalism of their elders.

I shouldn’t think these two groups -- let me call them “the oldies” and “the youffs” respectively -- are representative of the general population. They are representative of my readers. And even from those, I am excluding hecklers: the many correspondents who are eager to insult me, but have nothing themselves to say.

The youffs are wiser than the oldies. They are often rather naïve, or poorly educated, but the breath of defeat is not on them.

Almost invariably, the oldies write in complete misunderstanding of what I was saying, even though they think they are agreeing with me. They mention some pet event that happened in the world as if, “That was the end.” But my whole point was, no single event could be named; that outward events were merely symptomatic of a larger inversion of values, that had been coming about for a long time -- the dusk of decadence, gathering for decades.

Let me now quote an articulate young reader -- from Ottawa, born in 1984 -- to speak for the youffs:

“I for one, although young and idealistic, and much desiring to be a gentleman, have less idea than I would like as to how to go about such. And, even if I can do so (which is the main thing, I suppose) is it possible to set our civilization back upright? ... We did not, of course, get into this state suddenly. What comes first if we wish to reverse some of this? Is there any sort of roadmap?”

Now that is worth answering. And I think it can be answered in less than a column.

Especially in this Holy Week, we must realize that we are speaking of difficulties beyond our making, and of resolutions beyond our imagining. For those who were the builders of our civilization, as for those who may be the rebuilders, the task was and remains beyond the work of human hands. At the centre of the whole project was redemption in Christ.

The biggest single thing any individual can do, is to re-embrace that centre. He must endeavour less to change the world, than to change himself. And necessarily, to ask for the grace of God in doing so. For the project is no less than to rebuild Christendom: the foundation of the West. And this can only be done in human souls. The buildings and the clothing, the art and the music, that mysteriously hopeful view of the universe -- these things are outward reflections of what is wrought in human souls.

I believe the answer begins in personal conversion; in reading and thinking as deeply as we can about reality, and about our history. This requires courage: for you will be mocked. I would hold that the “roadmap” exists, in the Bible and the teachings of the Church and her saints. And that, while reason is our guide, the road is essentially sacramental.

Emphasis mine — B-chan

[B-Chan]

Politics are pointless. the West will only be revived by an inward resurrection. That's what Easter is about — the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our only hope, both as individuals and as a civilization.

[B-Chan]

Hat tip to you.

[GMMAC]

Thanks FRiend!
What an unexpected pleasure & surprise.

Here's the Sunday column referred to above along with one of my comments from the lengthy thread it generated:

Date of the inversion ~ David Warren, Ottawa Citizen, Sunday, April 01, 2007

BTW, if you haven't heard of David Warren before, to me he's Canada's most unfairly unheralded conservative Catholic pundit. Although I usually do when I post his stuff, I neglected to offer his website as an initial comment: DavidWarrenOnLine.com (which avoids the Ottawa Citizen's sometimes in place pay-to-view barrier).
As much as I enjoy his cultural & political writing, his theological work is even better!

Once Elvis was asked "so, whose music do you listen to?" and, without missing a beat, he replied "Roy Orbison's".
Who does Mark Steyn read? He's been known to cite his fellow Canadian & friend David Warren.

PING!

[marron]

What comes first if we wish to reverse some of this?

Forget reverse, reverse is how we got here. The answer is forward. The answer is to not lose track of what we are doing here. The answer is to build, to create, to love, to aim for truth and to aim for beauty. Love God, love your wife, love your kids, love the idiot next door, and keep going forward.

Warren is right. Civilization is the sum of hearts, it is the fruit of souls, and it is in the soul that the work starts and ends, the visible physical and cultural civilization that you can see and measure is the byproduct of a million souls. They have the spark of God in them or they don't, and when they don't they eventually lose their way and run aground.

I didn't like Warren's earlier piece because it was too much like pessimism and too much like reverse nostalgia, where the old folks endlessly remind their kids that they have it too easy, their hair is funny, and the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.

And in fact it is teetering on the edge of hell, as it always is, as it forever is, the past only looks stable because it has already been freeze-dried into unchanging solidity as time left it behind. But it was no more stable in its moment that is our moment now. Every era and every moment is a battleground of souls.

So you push forward, build your family, build your business, write your music, build the project God has put in front of you, and from the little seedlings that spring from your life God will birth the new civilization.

[B-Chan]

D’accord. Have a blessed Triduum!

[siunevada]

I believe you have stated the roadmap for the young man.

I love this:

And in fact it is teetering on the edge of hell, as it always is, as it forever is, the past only looks stable because it has already been freeze-dried into unchanging solidity as time left it behind. But it was no more stable in its moment that is our moment now. Every era and every moment is a battleground of souls.

Life is worth living.

[Don W]

How tragic that a profound truth about our founding faith is reminded us by a convert.

Then again, there is the latest offensive by the godless to try and turn the season of the Resurrection into yet another orgy of consumerism. I have seen more commercials advocating “Easter, yet Another season/reason to Give” this year than in the last decade!

I am ignorant in methods and tactics to fight this further desecration of basic Christian principles and “raisons d’etre”, but holy guacamole, am I PISSED!

It’s bad enough that the heathen “bunny” invaded (simply to give certain heathen groups reason to try and follow), but now the “gifters” (who are nothing less than GRAFTERS) are trying to invade our faith by further denigrating our sacred beliefs?

It serves us right (I suppose) in some kharmic way, that we allowed the unionists to usurp our HOLY days and generate “statutory HOLIdays”.

We’ve made our bed. Let’s DEAL with it.

[Elsiejay]

Tragic, you say? Nay, count it as yet another blessing, and give thanks for that perceptive and challenging convert. It does little good to curse the darkness, or our own failings.

[Don W]

Good point, and well taken. G_d Bless.

[GMMAC]

"How tragic that a profound truth about our founding faith is reminded us by a convert."

C'mon Don, you speak as if we 'converts' weren't in truth once "separated brethren" and now "prodigal sons" joyously returned home! ;-)

Said somewhat whimsically but, maybe for more than a few "cradle Catholics" gone wrong it's that very otherwise fortunate familiarity that's bred unholy contempt?